Cool Stuff... continued. (in parts... because blogger hates me.)

2) Cross Pens
These are really cool pens (link lets you see them in 3D).
Now I know there are 4 pens on that page... yeah yeah, so sue me. But they are all really neat in their own little ways. I actually own the "ion" which is neat because it's small enough to attach comfortably to your keychain and you pull out to extend the writing part. I've also heard great things about the morph pen... although I've never had one... so I can't say.

3) The Uniball Fusion (I've been trying to find a link but there isn't one)
Ok... so this is a normal pen, no cool design or mechanism. It also looks pretty normal ... a clear barrel but that's really normal these days. The cool part? The clear gel that's in the clear barrel IS the ink. Yes, it's clear. But when it writes, it's midnight blue (and a really nice shade at that). So, the logical conclusion: chemical reaction... And that's the really exciting thing. (Ok, I'm a nerd.). I'm pretty sure that it's an oxidization reaction and that there is a really careful and clever mechanism by which the barrel is sealed so that no oxygen enters. But the fact that the ink changes color is really cool (and I'm not talking about those really cheesy "magic" markers either). I'm also rather partial to the color: midnight blue (also called blue/black) which I've only been able to find as a fountain pen ink color. (Sidenote: Blue/Black comes in a variety of shades, from the more blue to the more black to a rather awful greenish one. Be careful when you get it and don't get too many cartridges the first time.) The Uniball fusion also comes in a variety of other colors, including some version of red and some version of purple. Also the price, at $2 a pen, is a lot lower than for either of the above pens (even refills for the above pens)... and it writes just as well (although the ink runs out really quickly, I've found)

-- Continued above.

--C.